1.
MIRPUR, DACCA. GVs People wading through flooded Asian highway carrying children, possessions etc. and with cattle (5 shots)
0.22

2.
GVS & MVS People rewing beats along flooded area (5 shots)
0.45

3.
MVS People getting off boats (2 shots)
0.53

4.
GV People wading through flooded highway
0.58

5.
GVS People travel through flooded street in Metijheel in trucks, rickshaws and boats (4 shots)
1.22

6.
GV PAN Flooded area in Sutrapur
1.30

7.
CU Sign Gandaria
1.34

8.
GV Submerged station and railway lines (2 shots)
1.42

9.
GVS & MV Train passing through Gandaria (3 shots)
1.58

10.
CU Water pump
2.03

11.
GV Train
2.08



Initials BB/0248 MF/DW/BB/0311



Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

Background: It is now estimated that some 3,000 people have died and millions have been forced to leave their homes in the worst monsoon floods in living memory in Bangladesh.

This year rain fell for 54 days without a break and in addition it has rained in the Himalaya mountains, causing an increase in floodwater from the Ganges and Bhramaputra rivers. Floodwater has started subsiding in the country's four major river systems, but in its wake come the inevitable outbreaks of cholera, caused by pollution of domestic water supplies.

Health authorities said that they have rushed 200 medical volunteers and batches of anti-cholera vaccine to the big northern centres of Mymensingh and Rangpur, where the disease is spreading.

Local Health officials were running short of vaccine and emergency medical supplies have been airlifted to Bangladesh from Switzerland and Malaysia to help fight off the epidemic.

A Red Cross representative who arrived in Dacca on Sunday (11 August) to survey the damage said that Bangladesh would be unable to overcome the devastation unless helped by international organisations and friendly countries.

In the meantime a big international relief effort has been gathering momentum. The World Food Programme announced that it is providing emergency aid worth one million pounds sterling and is shipping 3,000 tons of wheat and 200 tons of vegetable oil to Bangladesh.

SYNOPSIS: In the Bangladesh floods it is now estimated that three thousand people have lost their lives. Millions have been made homeless, thousands of cattle and other livestock have perished and eighty per cent of the country's land has been affected. They are the worst floods in the memory of a people long conditioned by disaster.

Now, although the floodwaters are subsiding in some areas, cholera outbreaks have followed them and there are fears that an epidemic is inevitable. Local health officials have been running short of anti-cholera vaccine and emergency medical supplies are being airlifted from abroad in efforts to prevent the disease from spreading.

In Dacca, the capital city of Bangladesh, the situation is worsening as thousands more people are being driven from their homes by rising floodwaters.

A Red Cross representative who arrived to survey the damage in Bangladesh on Sunday said that he did not think that the country could overcome the devastation unless helped by international organisations and friendly countries. The reaction to this has been immediate, with one million pound sterling's worth of aid already designated by the World Food Programme.

Train services in some areas have been partially restored. One station master said that trains were running "at great risk" on tracks still submerged by rainwater. He said there was to alternative as all other means of transportation were suspended.

Thousands of people are on the move into the cities of Bangladesh, having left their homes in ruins in the flooded countryside. There are stories of people being swept away and drowned as they slept, people being stranded in trees for days without food and hundreds of bodies drifting into towns from neighbouring villages.